The fact that many famous smart people have had faith doesn't prove that God exists but it does prove that there must exist reasonable definitions of "faith", "reason", and "compatible" under which faith and reason are compatible. Otherwise those famous smart people would all have to have been too stupid to notice a trivial contradiction.

So one can dispute about which kinds of definition are most useful or reasonable or whatever, but to insist that "the" definitions make faith and reason incompatible is just dumb.

‘Belief in God’ though isn’t where it stops. Because we’ve yet to agree on what ‘God’ refers to. People have faith in something that they’ve labelled ‘God’ and it can be a label that covers a very broad spectrum - from money, to the sun, to Xanu, Zeus, Voodoo, etc etc. It would be more accurate to say people have faith that there’s something other than our reality at play. Faith that ‘the truth is out there’...<cue X-Files music>

And Shermer is bang on when he declares his agnosticism thus “I don’t know, and you don’t either.” If people were intellectually honest, everyone would accept that his position is the only position on the subject of “something other than our reality” (or “God” if you prefer).

_________________Joseph Smith proposed to Fanny in the same way Trump proposed to Stormy Daniels.(Fence Sitter, Wed Sep 05, 2018 2:20pm)

Shermer is bang on when he declares his agnosticism thus “I don’t know, and you don’t either.” If people were intellectually honest, everyone would accept that his position is the only position on the subject of “something other than our reality” (or “God” if you prefer).

Absolutely. In fact "know" is a tricky thing to explain in any case. It's one of the big questions in philosophy. I can't claim to be absolutely certain of very many things, even things that I would normally say that I don't doubt at all. There's always some small chance that I'm just a brain in a jar being fed simulations by somebody, and in that case everything that I now think is true could change completely in the next instant, and none of it would ever have really been what I thought it was. I'm not even sure I quite believe Descartes "I think, therefore I am". It sounds convincing, but is it really airtight? I'm not sure.

For practical purposes, however, there are many things that it's well worth assuming. Even though I acknowledge a small chance that I'm a brain in a jar, I never really take this possibility seriously in any way, and I think I'm smart not to do so. I never take seriously the possibility that the sun won't come up tomorrow. For professional reasons I'm even pretty locked into the assumptions that quantum field theory and general relativity must be good approximations to the theory of everything within the regimes that we've explored until now. I rarely even consider alternative hypotheses and I never take them seriously.

Faith is not about kidding yourself that you know things for certain. It's about not taking alternative possibilities seriously. When and why exactly is it a good idea to stop taking a possibility seriously? That's not easy to say even when the practical choice seems obvious, as it does for possibilities like the brain-in-jar scenario, or gravity suddenly disappearing. When and why should one ever stop taking seriously the possibility of the non-existence of God? That's certainly harder to justify.

My point is just that the issue is not the trivial one about not having absolute certainty about God. Of course nobody has that. But that isn't the point.

Faith is not about kidding yourself that you know things for certain. It's about not taking alternative possibilities seriously. When and why exactly is it a good idea to stop taking a possibility seriously? That's not easy to say even when the practical choice seems obvious, as it does for possibilities like the brain-in-jar scenario, or gravity suddenly disappearing. When and why should one ever stop taking seriously the possibility of the non-existence of God? That's certainly harder to justify.

My point is just that the issue is not the trivial one about not having absolute certainty about God. Of course nobody has that. But that isn't the point.

Physics Guy, I thought you made good points in your post. Any comments about faith run into the problem that the word faith has a spread of meanings. I see a point to the way you used it here. I on the other hand do not think faith in God involves not taking seriously the possibility of Gods Non existence. I think instead that faith is being true to, acting in accordance with, your best awareness of God.

Just wanted to note that for the price of admission for you and a guest to see Prof. Peterson, you could instead stay two nights at the Bellagio in an 853 sq.ft. suite, with a complimentary $150 food/beverage credit, and still have a little cash left over.

_________________"Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead." ~Charles Bukowski

Faith is not about kidding yourself that you know things for certain. It's about not taking alternative possibilities seriously. When and why exactly is it a good idea to stop taking a possibility seriously? That's not easy to say even when the practical choice seems obvious, as it does for possibilities like the brain-in-jar scenario, or gravity suddenly disappearing. When and why should one ever stop taking seriously the possibility of the non-existence of God? That's certainly harder to justify.

Are you comparing a brain-in-jar with "the non-existence of God"? Listen, the most honest answer is that we really don't know. Sure it is possible we are a brain-in-a-jar, but the number of possibilities are endless. God is just one of the many possibilities out-there. We should simply use Occam's razor to not go insane.

I compared them in the sense that I mentioned them both as examples of cases that no-one can entirely rule out. The point is only that "we can't know" doesn't weigh heavily against God because we can't really know much of anything. You've got to go beyond the easy win of "can't know" to show that it's somehow quite unreasonable to assume God. That's not as easy.

Defining a measure on the set of possibilities is a bit of a challenge. Most of logic is designed around bits, with countable sets of propositions to be labeled true or false, but the set of possibilities is clearly uncountable. Heck, there's probably a surprisingly good ontological argument for God to be made from the notion that there are lots more ways for a God to exist than for no God to exist, because there's only one way for nothing to be nothing but there are lots of possible variants of God. I don't alike that kind of argument myself, but if you really want to argue about God, you have to deal with all kinds of tedious stuff. Even idiotic arguments can be hard to refute. Bertrand Russell himself famously spent a day being convinced that Anselm's ontological argument was valid.

I don't think God is only one possibility among many. There could be this kind of God or that kind of God. God is a large range of possibilities. How large, in comparison to the range of other possibilities, is something I don't think anyone can say.

I compared them in the sense that I mentioned them both as examples of cases that no-one can entirely rule out. The point is only that "we can't know" doesn't weigh heavily against God because we can't really know much of anything. You've got to go beyond the easy win of "can't know" to show that it's somehow quite unreasonable to assume God. That's not as easy.

It is "we don't know". It is very hard to prove that faith in God is unreasonable. How do you define God? I myself think it is likely that god-like extraterrestrials exists somewhere in the universe. I can't prove faith is unreasonable, but I can show that faith is unnecessary.

Physics Guy wrote:

Heck, there's probably a surprisingly good ontological argument for God to be made from the notion that there are lots more ways for a God to exist than for no God to exist

If God doesn't exists we will never know it. It is impossible to prove that God doesn't exists.

Physics Guy wrote:

I don't think God is only one possibility among many. There could be this kind of God or that kind of God. God is a large range of possibilities. How large, in comparison to the range of other possibilities, is something I don't think anyone can say.

Sure God can be technology. Isn't it better to believe in Cryonics than it is to believe in some God who is going to raise you from the grave?

If you are a brain in a jar, that changes nothing, really. The known universe collapses into that point theoretically but it is still as big as your brain. The other debaters are still subject to those rules in your brain, as are you. Whatever you know as a brain in a jar is all you have to argue unless someone can established extra-jar information .

The debate won't be about God, but about the utility and importance of faith, a much easier topic for a religion to debate. I do hope that Peterson will bring up what he considers the very best arguments and reasons why his views are more correct than a skeptics, so that Shermer can then show what it is that keeps him skeptical. If there really was evidence, skeptics wouldn't have reasons for being such. I hope it's a good discussion.

Interesting.

I would be interested to see how they agree on the definitions of faith and reason. What is faith?

Last edited by Meadowchik on Sun Jun 10, 2018 1:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Faith is not about kidding yourself that you know things for certain. It's about not taking alternative possibilities seriously. When and why exactly is it a good idea to stop taking a possibility seriously? That's not easy to say even when the practical choice seems obvious, as it does for possibilities like the brain-in-jar scenario, or gravity suddenly disappearing. When and why should one ever stop taking seriously the possibility of the non-existence of God? That's certainly harder to justify.

My point is just that the issue is not the trivial one about not having absolute certainty about God. Of course nobody has that. But that isn't the point.

The possibility of God is much closer to the possibility of a brain in a jar then gravity suddenly disappearing. Faith in God/s being reasonable seems to need faith to be defined as well as God. If faith is just believing in some general creator and one just goes on with living life I could see a good argument for that faith being reasonable. If Faith means giving up 10% or more of your income and 10+ hours a weeks doing things you may not enjoy that much, then that faith needs a lot of evidence to be reasonable.

Religions define many Gods. LDS God has so much evidence against it is unreasonable to have faith in that God. I would suggest the Christian God is in better shape then the LDS God, but not by much. Even with the more vague concept of God/s why should I even have faith that God exists? I can't think highly of an entity that will require blind faith in them. It seems from what I know about the world that any faith more then just believing God exist's and living as though God doesn't exist is unreasonable. Of course another problem may be how we define reasonable.

ThemisLDS God has so much evidence against it is unreasonable to have faith in that God. I would suggest the Christian God is in better shape then the LDS God, but not by much.

I honestly don't see any difference that makes either one better than the other. Zeus has as much of a chance as either of these two, and I see literally nothing in favor of Zeus being physically existing as real.

_________________Science is not reliable because it provides certainty. It is reliable because it provides us with the best answers we have at present. And it is reliability we need, not certainty. The most credible answers are the ones given by science, because science is the search for the most credible answers available, not for answers pretending to certainty. Carlo Rovelli

ThemisLDS God has so much evidence against it is unreasonable to have faith in that God. I would suggest the Christian God is in better shape then the LDS God, but not by much.

I honestly don't see any difference that makes either one better than the other. Zeus has as much of a chance as either of these two, and I see literally nothing in favor of Zeus being physically existing as real.

The Christian God does better only because the LDS God Joseph created has so much evidence against. The Christian God has less evidence against due to most claims and events happening thousands of years ago and they define God a little more vaguely.

ThemisThe Christian God has less evidence against due to most claims and events happening thousands of years ago and they define God a little more vaguely.

If neither has any evidence for, no matter what time periods we are looking at, then they both have the same quality of weakness, so far as I can tell, nothing in favor. That is all I see. They are both simply human projections. Funny, when I was into reading all about "God" I discovered this is true of every proposed deity!

_________________Science is not reliable because it provides certainty. It is reliable because it provides us with the best answers we have at present. And it is reliability we need, not certainty. The most credible answers are the ones given by science, because science is the search for the most credible answers available, not for answers pretending to certainty. Carlo Rovelli

ThemisThe Christian God has less evidence against due to most claims and events happening thousands of years ago and they define God a little more vaguely.

If neither has any evidence for, no matter what time periods we are looking at, then they both have the same quality of weakness, so far as I can tell, nothing in favor. That is all I see. They are both simply human projections. Funny, when I was into reading all about "God" I discovered this is true of every proposed deity!

As far as a lack of evidence I would agree, but the LDS God has quite a bit against it's existence. LDS God is very dependent on Joseph's claims being true and we know of no good evidence in favor of the LDS God, but lots against like the Book of Mormon and Book of Abraham.